DS9: Meridian

         It is never a good sign when the B story about Quark trying to get a holoimage of Kira turns out to be more interesting than the technobabble/romance A story. Not that it is completely terrible or anything, just fairly unremarkable. I found myself getting more and more distracted whenever the A story was going on. I guess having Dax fall in love with an alien doesn't seem like such an incredibly enticing story. I know there is the drama of if they can even be together since he is going to phase out of reality or something, but it just never really got anything going. 
         The episode opens with Kira enjoying a drink at the replimat with Odo. An alien named Tiron walks up and starts flirting with Kira, evidently they had been in Quarks the night before, but she is not having it. To try and get rid of him she tells him she and Odo are passionately in love which mostly confuses Odo. But Tiron finally leaves and goes straight to Quark to commission a "special" holosuite program. The Defiant is flying around the gamma quadrant when they encounter a planet where none was the last time they were here. It is class M and occupied so they beam down. It turns out the planet phases in and out of our dimension regularily but something is wrong, the changes are happening at an accelerating rate. Dax offers to help and without really any apparent reason falls madly in love with the local scientist who is trying to solve the problem.
         Quark goes through various high jinks including telling Kira she is his one millionth customer to try and trick her into going into a holosuite so he can scan her. Eventually Quark catches him trying to scan her on the promenade and the two of them confront him. Not being one to give up he then hacks the computer to try and get her records but they figure it out again and replace Kira with Quark in the holoprogram. Meanwhile Dax and her lover solve the problem, it turns out he doesn't want to leave and Bashir has a technobabble way for her to stay. But it doesn't work and she has the planet dissolve around her and they beam her to safety. 

         Review: I mean, I know he is going away for 60 years, but she is a Trill, shouldn't they even discuss that she might still be around when he gets back? It just seems like a lot of the A story didn't get thought through very well in favor of a straight forward romance without much story to it.

4 out of 10